Three Questions for Performance Management

Ask any manager about their least favorite tasks, and more than likely they’ll put ‘performance evaluations’ at or near the top of the list.    Why? Lots of reasons - not the least of which is the “Gotcha!”: an assumption that you need to find something deficient in each staff member, and come up with a prescription to fix it, thereby improving performance.  All too often, you’re going to find something that the person thinks they are doing very well (and they may be right), or something they have no interest in doing better.  At worst, you’re expected to assign tasks or reassign job responsibilities to develop one person’s undesired ’something’, which may well be a task or a job that someone else on your team really enjoys (or would enjoy) doing!

Here’s an better approach.  Just ask these three questions:

• Are you doing enough of what you like?
• Are you doing too much of what you don’t like?
• What can we do to change these things and make them better?

If someone isn’t doing enough of what they really like, they are probably:

(a) in the wrong job,

(b) looking for another job,

(c) not very productive, or

(d) all of the above!

If someone on your team is doing too much of what they don’t like, the problem may not reside in the individual, but rather, in the team. The causes: a team that is missing people with key needed Roles;  the team’s Vision, mission, or goals have not been communicated clearly enough; or, there is a less-than-optimal Coherence Ratio on the team.

The good news is that you can change these conditions and make the team work better for everyone.

Start with Role-Based Assessments* for the whole team, yourself included.  Then compare who you have (the Roles) with what you need (the right Roles for the team’s mission).  Finally, look at what needs to be done, figure out who the right person is to achieve each need,  and confirm with people that they have the right tools – and teammates – to do their job better.

The whole point of performance evaluation is to improve performance. Try this approach and the improvement will be obvious to management, to your staff, and to you!

* Don’t know what Role-Based Assessment is?  Do you want a RBA Business Solution at No Charge?  Just request one from info@thegabrielinstitute.com!

The Intern Diaries: Lessons Learned

The final four gave their presentations this week, talking about what they did, what they learned, how they changed.

Learning is changing.  I think they expected to learn but I a not so sure they expected to change.  The biggest change, for all of them, is how much more they now want to change.  To grow, to experience, to learn – all is to change.

I learned and changed too.

I had to laugh when one of the interns remarked that she learned she liked working with older people.  The funny thing is, I learned to like working with younger people – those who are coherent, strong in their Role, and like working on teams.

I learned, most of all, that the basic principles of building and supporting a Coherent Human Infrastructure are not dependent on age, experience, or ‘rank’.  Value is value, quality is quality, synergy is synergy.  And trust, respect, and faith in the Vision are still the alpha and the omega.

Birthday Card for Liberty

I was looking for a speech I gave a long time ago and found this instead.  It seems timely for today, America’s birthday.  It was taken from a story I told to a modern day group of ‘game-changers’.  There were the mystical-sounding ‘rules of engagement’ and then my translations into what I thought they needed to know about applying them to the achievement of their vision of liberty.

Liberty Warriors: The Rules of Engagement

1. Water moves over rocks and ground; it parts around boulders and carries the sand. The warrior is persistent, even in the face of ignorance, adversity and derision, and is flexible enough to overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacle.
2. Recognizing the futility of separating logic from emotion, the wisest leader enters the mind with the heart and the heart with the mind. The warrior stalks the quarry in the most vulnerable places with the most effective tools.  Where there are few warriors, they remind themselves all that they must be both warriors of the mind and warriors of the heart.
3. The elders have advised, act as though you have two faces on the same head, one to lead, one to follow; one to look forward, one to look back; one to listen and one to see. The warrior is not solely a leader or a follower, but embodies the best characteristics of both.
4. That which the farmer sows is not what the sorcerer reaps, nor does the brewer feel the intoxication. Each warrior brings a context for warriorhood: a lived life of circumstance.  The race is not to the swift… time and chance happen to all.
5. A corner brings together the three dimensions, yet itself has no volume.  Such is the warrior a container for valued treasures; the size is unknowable, but humility and self-knowledge increase it. The warrior knows his own box well before attempting to think out of it.

I concluded by exhorting them to go forth, knowing their own minds and their own hearts, and then guide others in discovering that their hearts and their minds crave liberty as they do.  I expect that a good many did and I hope they are celebrating today, together in the hope that we will all come out of our challenges, stronger and more flexible, as individuals, teams, a nation, and a global family.  As I hope you are.

The Negotiation of Time and Space

I think about ‘keeping the beat’ a lot these days.  It’s at the top of the Founder’s job description when the enterprise gets to the point where there is so much activity that someone needs to keep it pointed toward the far off Vision.  It’s like trying to sing three parts at the same time – theoretically impossible, but when it somehow works, quite magnificent.

So it was a special treat last night to hear Steve Goodman (by day, Morgan Lewis’s guru to emerging growth companies and, earlier that evening, speaker on board governance at Entrepreneurs Forum of Greater Philadelphia) play the kind of jazz piano that I can only hear in my head but not reproduce with my hands.  Even more interesting was his ‘conversation’ with other players, chiefly the string bass.

In a solo, the music is in the spaces between the notes.  But in a combo, it is in the energy – the negotiation – of the time and space between the players.  Not unlike the difference between working yourself and working on a team.

I have no doubt that the timing in his legal negotiations is likewise impeccable.

Coherent Conductors, Crabby Culture

The simplest definition of corporate culture I’ve ever seen was “the way we do things around here.”  But corporate culture is anything but simple.  It actually derives from the human infrastructure, the energy of the organization as determined by the predominating Roles and coherency of the people who get the work of the organization done.

So I was particularly interested in Daniel Rubin’s column in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer in which he mentions the predominant newspaper culture as “crabby, but effective.”  This is the setup to compare it to the culture at the US Census Bureau which, while it sounds less crabby, is also likely much less effective.  (If you want to know more, you really want to read the My Two Census blog – nonpartisan and written by presumably crabby political journalists, this is a gem.)

I bet they have a lot of Conductors in print journalism.  Dedicated to getting things ‘right’, using the power of the pen to do the work of the sword and, in general, teaching us the truth as they see it, of course they get crabby at times.  They don’t get nearly the respect they deserve, no matter what type of organization they work in.  But show me a bunch of coherent Conductors, with maybe a coherent Vision Former, a couple of Action Formers and a few Communicators and Curators and you’ve got a team that’s going to follow the Vision and truly give you the news that’s fit to print.

And it will be worth reading.

On Human Infrastructure

Ask Dr. Janice has a new look and a new page.  That’s what happens when there are fresh inputs, both from the environment (feels like Spring at last in Philadelphia!) and the growing human infrastructure in my entrepreneurial life.

I took music instead of art in college (it was a choice in those long ago days) so I figured I was remembering wrong when I thought, form dictates function.  Googled it to educate myself on who said it and what they meant by it, vaguely remembering it had something to do with buildings designed to house manufacturing plants.  It’s actually from this, by American architect Louis Sullivan who coined the phrase in 1896:

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,
Of all things physical and metaphysical,
Of all things human and all things super-human,
Of all true manifestations of the head,
Of the heart, of the soul,
That the life is recognizable in its expression,
That form ever follows function.

I think he meant form should follow function.  Because in the real world, I see much more form dictating function.  That is, we have a form – often in the guise of a policy or procedure or even an architectural structure like a cube farm outside a corner office – that tells us how we should interact.  Consider the hierarchical organization where cross-level discussions are frowned on.  This creates horizontal silos and limits the natural human urge to interact – to function.

For the human infrastructure to be strong there needs to be no limit on thinking, on synergizing, on the production of the fresh and new. It needs to follow Vision.

Visions of Succession

Every so often I think about succession planning.  My own.  But I’m not planning on leaving.  I’m planning on sharing.  Let me explain.

I’m thinking that a lot of CEO problems are caused by people who think they can do a huge job well, all by themselves.  Up till now, our company has been small enough that I could do a credible job myself.  But as we grow bigger, I find it makes much more sense to work with someone else as sort of an extender.  If it was on a shelf at the supermarket it would be called CEO Helper.  I prefer the term VisionMeld(tm).

So how do you find someone to share?  Role-Based Assessment to start, for sure, but I think  asking the candidate to write a Vision Paper really should be part of every recruiting process.

The Vision Paper is a way of explaining to the leadership team of an organization what it is that they are expected to accomplish, the purpose for the venture.  It does not go into precisely how they to achieve it since that isn’t a problem for the CEO to solve alone.  It begins with a bit of the history behind the product or service and goes on to simply describe the end, the goal or the long-term, desired outcome for the organization.  Where most mission statements are vague and general, the Vision Paper is personal.  It’s the best measure of the ability to be an inspiring leader I have ever seen.  And the knack of inspiring and motivating others to follow your dream is the sine qua non of the successful CEO.

I asked a friend what he thought.  Ever practical, he concurred and pointed out that it’s a way of getting to agreement as to what the performance expectations will be.  “You’re just trying to find someone who can do the job.  To lead a company successfully, you need to know where you’re going and the Vision Paper is your roadmap,” he said.

I guess I’m just more mystical than he is.  For me, the energy that goes into writing a Vision Paper reflects back on the author in an almost magical way. If it resonates, you probably have a good basis for a VisionMeld(tm) – and for sharing and succeeding.

When Visions Meet

Do you remember those sped-up photos of cells dividing and multiplying until they reach the point where they change direction and something new and different emerges?

It’s like that with visions.  When two visions come very close, when they are mergeable in some way, if they are fed the energy of both sources they too become something new – a living, breathing organism of some sort.  Whether that is one being or an enterprise involving thousands of individual organisms acting together is less important than the mechanism: two original, pure visions, each dedicated to bettering the world in some way. coming together in an ecosystem that supports the human spirit, producing revolutionary progress that benefits the far off future.

I think sometimes when it is about to happen, one or both visions are overcome with the fear that they will be engulfed or destroyed by the other and the natural drive to merge them fails.  The trick is not to erect walls to keep fears out but to make them visible for what they are: the hobgoblins we keep alive with our distracted energy.

I’ve just started working on one – I think of it as a VisionMeld – and will keep you posted on my progress.

Open Letter to President-elect Obama

Dear President-elect Obama,

Welcome to the ranks of Chief Executives, those of us, large and small, at whom the buck stops. I voted for you, not just because I agree with so many of your values but because you have a compelling Vision.  And that’s what it’s going to take to get this enterprise called the USA back on track. Like any other CEO, I’m also here to offer my advice, based not only on my own experience but that of those CEOs whose companies we’ve worked with.  I’ll keep it short and sweet, just the big three.

1. Keep preaching the Vision.  People are starved for inspiration – they’ve been operating at a deficit for years.
2. Keep an equal concern with the inside of your company and the outside – what you probably think of as foreign and domestic relations.  This is one world but don’t be like the shoemaker whose kids have bare feet.
3. Keep showing your humility.  America doesn’t want a king – it never has.  That’s why we don’t really like dynasties, even though we occasionally elect them.  Be human and let us all learn to trust you.

The economy will continue to have its ups and downs (though it will recover quicker, imho, if you support grassroots creative entrepreneurship over bailing out the over-privileged.)  There will be conflicts and disputes and civil wars in places near and far where people are angry and have no hope of a better life.  And there will be injustices, big and small, because since that apple tree in the Garden of Eden there have always been temptations and people willing to trade away their integrity for them.  You will have no control over these things so just do your best and try not to succumb to the illusions of power. Focus on what you can do to make this country a Best Place to Work, a Best Place to Live and a Best Place to Be.  Support what gives us opportunity, not only for prosperity of the pocketbook but also of the soul.  Help us be the change we want to make.

Warning: Powerlessness May Be Dangerous to Your Brain – and Your Business

Scary reading this morning and it wasn’t on page one of the any of my Sunday papers: Dip in brainpower may follow drop in real power on the World Science site.

The re­search­ers, reporting in Psychological Science, con­ducted three ex­pe­ri­ments, putting Dutch uni­ver­s­ity stu­dents in dif­fer­ent sce­nar­i­os de­signed to make them feel ei­ther dom­i­nant or sub­or­di­nate in “rank”. They were then asked to perform think­ing tests, such as puzzles. The “pow­erless” ones had trouble plan­ning, up­dat­ing a men­tal pic­ture and ignor­ing ir­rel­e­vant in­forma­t­ion, the authors reported, attributing this to the fact that low power people are not expected to fo­cus on the over­all goals. Con­sist­ent with this interpretation, were the results of a fourth ex­pe­ri­ment us­ing a game de­signed so that it would re­main easy to fo­cus on the task goal. It wasn’t mo­tiva­t­ion that was the problem. The less powerful participants re­ported put­ting in as much ef­fort as oth­ers, the re­search­ers said.

Whatever happened to the idea of empowering workers? Especially now when competition for human capital is high and predicted to rise? Yet more and more I hear people talk about structuring jobs to be exactly what is needed – forget what the employee needs. Wake up call:organizations can’t afford to play zero-sum games any more. Command and control just takes those human capital assets and chews them into tiny bits of useless action, uncoordinated by any Vision. And apparently the effect is long lasting.

I want a smarter world, one with more Vision, more power, more mastery, more innovation, more excellence. Ok, that may not motivate you. But what if all those people whose brains lost power because of managerial abuse put in Workers Comp claims?